PB Exclusive: Charlie Earl, The Candidate John Kasich Busted Off The Ballot In 2014, Reflects On Kasich’s Call For Fair Play Now

On Monday in Albany, New York, ahead of next Tuesday’s primary, Ohio Gov. John Kasich complained that tactics used in Michigan’s primary in early March by Texas Senator Ted Cruz were not appropriate.

Gov. Kasich, who finished third in Michigan behind Sen. Cruz—and way behind first-place finisher Donald Trump—then complained to reporters that the Cruz campaign tried to “strong arm and bully” people in Ohio’s neighbor to the north.

Basic Kasich Brass

When John Kasich whines that GOP convention rules that don’t benefit him should be changed to help in July, and that other candidates like Ted Cruz are playing rough with him, one person back in Ohio is eminently qualified like no other to comment on Mr. Kasich’s sudden attack of playing fair.

Reliable polling at the time showed Mr. Earl, a former Ohio House Member from Bowling Green in northwest Ohio near Toledo, could siphon off about a half-dozen percentage points from GOP base voters, who had long turned against John Kasich after they pushed the former 18-year congressman over the finish line in 2010. Camp Kasich’s worry at the time was that, with Mr. Earl in the race taking votes away from him, a race with a competitive Democratic could pose problems if the election turned out to be close. The Democratic candidate subsequently imploded, relieving the governor’s team of their worst fear.

Charlie Earl’s candidacy represented the values of many conservatives who thought Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, following a budget battle in the GOP-led General Assembly in which House Republicans told him not to do it, was one of many slaps he dealt to conservative values, beliefs and core principles about limited government, fiscal responsibility and rising debt.

Earl’s Pearls On Kasich’s Hardball Politics

Based on how Mr. Kasich and his henchmen treated the Libertarian Party of Ohio’s candidate for governor in 2014—in order to clear all hurdles from becoming obstacles to the first-term governor’s path to a glorious second term win—Charlie Earl had a few choice observations.

In a Plunderbund exclusive, Mr. Earl weighed-in Monday on Kasich’s sudden desire for fairness and above-board play by Sen. Cruz. Mr. Earl, who describes himself as a farmer, teacher, writer and evangelist for liberty, offered pointed comments on Gov. Kasich’s sudden clamor for ethical behavior, that state and national reporters ought to take note of if they want to contrast what John Kasich wants from others to help him out now versus what he was willing to do just two years ago to remove Earl’s name from the statewide ballot.

“John Kasich has proven again and again throughout this presidential election cycle that he is just another big-government-loving power-hungry career politician,” Charlie Earl told Plunderbund via email. “When the Rubio campaign unearthed petitioning irregularities by the Kasich Pennsylvania campaign, the willing sycophants of the Kasich machine successfully begged the Rubio people to withdraw their protest,” Earl said. “The two Republican camps moved on as if the law doesn’t matter for them.”

Earl sees the Pennsylvania scenario involving the Kasich and Rubio campaigns as illustrative of Gov. Kasich’s attitude. “The corrupt arrogance exhibited by the ‘One State Wonder’ is replayed time and again as he feebly pursues his pipe dream, and given the nature of the present GOP, he may be crowned the standard-bearer despite his inability to win more than a single primary,” Earl observed. “If the ideal Kasich plan plays-out, the GOP will get what it deserves, but our nation and our people will be victimized once again by just another career politician with no core or principles.”

Staying in the race for president far longer than some conservatives think he should given he’s only finished first in his home state after losing more than 30 other Republican contests, John Kasich hopes New Yorkers will love him longer next week than voters in other states have so far. Reliable polling shows that Kasich and Sen. Cruz are in a close race, but the Buckeye State leader gets blown out by Empire State native son and businessman folk hero Donald Trump.

Running from cover in Ohio, where he’ll be governor for another two years if his hopes and dreams of being president one day crash and burn this year like they did in 2000 when he made his first run for the White House, Gov. Kasich knows one thing is certain: His only hope to be the Republican nominee, since he can’t win the 1,237 delegates needed in the field, is to manipulate convention rules to lower the bar for eligibility so much that even he can be nominated from the convention floor in spite of his disastrous win-loss record.

Kasich Style Masquerades As Substance

With a few exceptions, state and national reporting on Gov. Kasich appears blind to the kind of down-and-dirty politics the former Lehman Brothers banker has learned to play over his nearly 40 years in performance politics. Kasich love to shill that he’s above politics, but the son of a Democratic government-union worker has become a very wealthy is no stranger to stacking the deck in his favor. Meanwhile, his real record, including his use of blow-the-belt tactics, lives in the shadows for enterprising reporters who ought to be shedding light on it.

For John Kasich to argue now that others who have won more votes and delegates should be rewarded by being replaced by someone like himself who hasn’t won much of anything is basic Kasich, as a small faction of media world know all too well. It’s not important, outside of millennial digital social media reporter circles, whether John Kasich eats his pizza with a fork, wants the day after the Super Bowl to be a national holiday or whether he vows to get Pink Floyd back together again in his first 100 days on the job in the White House.

What is important is what Gov. Kasich has done in the past when no one is looking versus what he now says he wants others to do when everyone is looking. The contrast should be of interest to any competent journalist worth their Twitter account. But it’s basic Kasich to complain that others are doing to him what he’s done to others over the years.

As the last hit-and-run victim of Camp Kasich’s inappropriate tactics, Charlie Earl knows all too well how hard John Kasich plays when he has to. It’s high time other reporters stop repeating what comes out of his mouth on any given day. It is time for them to start reporting why what he says should be challenged given the all the evidence laying there in plain sight.